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Acronis True Image - Windows 7 Cloning - ATI Users

On another thread I posted difficulties with cloning using ATI 10. After looking at other specialist threads elsewhere I have some suggestions for ATI uses for comment.
1. Cloning is designed for when a HD is on it's last legs. Imaging is the normal back up of choice.
2. Particularly with laptops cloning can have big problems.
3.I have a desktop, with several slide -out Caddy mounted SATA drives that exactly match my 500 gig main drive which is partitioned 100 gig for OS etc, balance for Data. For safety I run an ATI full - not incremental )Image every couple of weeks of the OS partition to a USB drive, and a daily Freefilesynch mirror image of the Data partition to the second HD. About monthly I put a different HD in the slot. It appears as a "slave" drive. I then run a clone of the whole of the "master" HD, with no problems, and keep the caddy elsewhere.
4. The problem comes with 2 laptops. In XP days cloning was no problem with ATI to a USB drive. All my PC's have W7 64bit. Recently, although imaging works fine, cloning fails with messages wrongly reporting "Operation Finished". Or "cannot locate drive".
5. From other forums this seems a common problem - ie cloning with a laptop to a USB is a no no. I had a major disaster a while ago and lost one laptop's OS - recovered with an earlier image.
6. I am about to try using the ATI CD to do a clone with a laptop and a USB drive. If anyone has successfully used ATI cloning wih W7 64 bit on a laptop using the Windows rather than the CD, I would be interested, but it seems to be only possible in Windows ATI to clone using an identical drive as I have in my desktop, not to a USB one.

Is your ATI 10 this version Acronis True Image 10 Home (PC)click here which I believe isn't compatible with Win7 or Acronis True Image Home 2010click here ? Please don't get confused.

I also found ATI sometimes has problem finding an external drive i.e. USB (internal HDD no problem), since Win7 has built-in image & restore function, I've used that ever since (just full imaging not bother with the backup) & it supports RAID as well.

Yes, I use Freefilesynch for mirror imaging data on a daily basis - takes less than a minute. I have a second drive in my main Desktop for this, and as it is in a pull out caddy, I have another for clones from time to time. I use a USB for images. It is the laptops that differ, and, I think , for which you need to use the CD for cloning.

I found an update to ATI Home 2010; downloaded it. As a one off, at least, cloning from a laptop to a USB HD seemed to work. Fingers crossed.
I did once use the "reverse clone" to restore my system - worked OK. I think it best to do a (approx.) weekly image, and a monthly clone if you have enough spare drives. Like *Fruit Bat /\0/* I keep the latest 2 full images, ditching the oldest at the time the 3rd is created and validated.

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